It's not only children's lives that can be transformed by singing. In Guildford, a remarkable woman, Caroline Redman Lusher, has started a new craze that has been sweeping the country: Rock Choir, which was reported on BBC Breakfast News several months ago and offers pop, gospel and Motown singing to children, teenagers and adults. The cathartic nature of singing has come into focus as the credit crunch bites. Rock choirs across the country are packed. Some companies, like the embattled Swiss banking giant UBS, have started choirs of their own. The reason? It's a powerful way to let off steam and lift the spirits.
Singing is a great leveller. Choirs — rock and otherwise — are essentially inclusive, with participants ranging from stay-at-home mums to members of the House of Lords. They bring people together to share an experience that takes you out of yourself and makes you feel connected to those around you. Anybody can sing, whatever their background or circumstances. One of today's finest Wagnerian singers, Lisa Gasteen, started off working for her family's dry-cleaning firm in Australia. The soprano Angela Gheorghiu hails from small-town Romania, where her parents were a train driver and a dressmaker. And witness the way that the voice of an unlikely woman from Blackburn, West Lothian, has transformed her — Susan Boyle — into the most downloaded singer to date.
Nothing non-competitive can attract a large and disparate crowd of people as strongly as music. Therefore there's nothing better to raise money, support and awareness for good causes. Charity concerts by the world's top rock stars have periodically drawn a huge amount of attention. The most famous example was Band Aid back in 1984, but more recently Annie Lennox founded her SING campaign to raise awareness of Aids in Africa, inspired to do so when she heard Nelson Mandela describe it as "genocide". She is just the latest to embrace the power that song has to unite, to help and, sometimes, to heal.
The effect of music on mind, body and spirit is not just woolly, new-age stuff, but scientifically proven. In August, the chamber music group The Nash Ensemble undertook a residency in Windsor with the composer and music therapy pioneer Nigel Osborne, devoted to that very subject. Supported by the Wellcome Trust, the series "Music and the Brain" included talks, discussions and concerts exploring science that identifies how musical experience "builds the brain" and contributes to human and societal development. Osborne's work in music therapy in Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo proved the power of music beyond doubt: he showed that it can reach traumatised children and help them to communicate, adding immeasurably to the healing process.
Music as a whole — but especially singing — has been extraordinarily undervalued for the past half-century, morphing into a commodity instead of an activity. That discrepancy needs to be tackled, for countless reasons; perhaps proving its benefits to physical and mental health can become a strong argument in its favour. After all, when we give it a chance, singing is still the most natural thing in the world.
